The Great Panic: Anna Thirsten
by HelloEllieBee
Summary: Max Brooks interviews Anna Thirsten about her experience through The Great Panic while heading West. With her father being the US Ambassador to South Africa where the Redeker Plan originated, he gives his family knowledge about the United States safe zone. This knowledge is their only chance at survival but ultimately leads them to bittersweet tragedy.


**Spokane, Washington, USA**

**[The Bigby is busy for Tuesday afternoon. The noise and bustle, however, doesn't bother Anna Thirsten. She suggested we meet here after her shift. Like most buildings in the city, the Bigby's windows allow a lookout of the Rocky Mountains. Anna was right, the view is breathtaking.]**

All the news programs and "experts" were telling us to move north where the zombies would freeze solid. Zack was travelling from the South-East, so of course that was the logical conclusion. My dad was a smart guy, though; he knew better. He knew a lot of things he wasn't supposed to.

**Because he was the US Ambassador to South Africa?**

Yes, for three years before...

**Did he know about the Redeker Plan?**

Of course. After seeing the success the plan had in South Africa, my father suggested the US use it. He called us a week after the Yonker failure to tell us about the safe zone past the Rocky Mountains. That night we packed clothes, canned food, and water; we didn't wait for morning to leave.

The highway leading south was a wasteland. Mom travelled over 100 the whole way. We didn't see another pair of rear lights for fifty miles. Mom thought travelling south first then heading west would help us avoid the migration North. This was true until we hit St. Louis where the traffic was backed up past entrance ramps. Two hours passed before we got off the entrance ramp to the connecting highway heading West. The mass was bumper to bumper slowly inching forward moving as a single body. There was no time to let people in, only time to escape. I think mom was one of the few drivers who let other cars onto the highway. At least we had a beautiful view of St. Louis lit up right before the sunrise while we waited.

**Why so many people heading West?**

I suppose they had the same logic we did except about heading North. Most of the license plates you saw were from states like Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas; going straight North would've been a death sentence once they hit Pennsylvania and New York. About ten miles down the highway the car behind us slammed on its horn right before rear ending us.

My mom turned around, turned the car off, and opened her door. She started towards the guy behind us while yelling at him. I never heard what she was saying; I was focused on the driver in the semi behind him reanimating behind the wheel. My little sister, Elly, pulled my sleeve.

"Anna, what's wrong with that lady?" she asked me. I answered that he was sick. Then it dawned on me what she asked. I pressed my head against the window to see around the semi. Dragging along the edge of the semi was a woman with gray skin. Where her left arm used to be was now a stump of tendons and shattered bone covered in a brown gel that kept dripping onto the ground. I rolled down the window and stuck my head out.

First I heard the moans. That sound settled in my stomach like a rock. I wanted to puke. Car alarms started going off followed by screams and the sounds of shattering windows and ripping flesh. I stretched a little farther and saw them. Thousands of them washing out the miles of cars behind us in gray, brown, and red. Despite all this, my mom was still picking a petty fight with the guy in the car. I started screaming at her to get back in the car, but she ignored me. My brother, Eddie, was out there, too, trying to get her back. I never heard him leave the car.

Zack was closer now, only a few cars behind us. I watched as the woman dragging by the semi busted through the window of a car with a "Baby On Board" sign. A baby's cries penetrated through the moaning and stopped abruptly as she lunged forward with her mouth open wide joined by two others. The parents were already dead in the front seat.

**What did you do?**

I'd heard stories of people going into those fight or flight responses to lift a car off their child or survive in the wilderness for weeks. I think that's what came over me. Mom and Eddie were still outside as Zack got the driver Mom was arguing with. I locked the doors and shoved Elly down behind the passenger seat. I wedged myself next to her behind the driver's seat. Our dog laid down on top of us. To think he probably saved our lives while Eddie was telling Mom it wasn't practical to bring him. **[Laughs]. **

Mom and Eddie started pounding on the windows for us to let them in. Zack was already there streaming around our car. One of them grabbed Mom and tore her apart. Blood soaked the driver's side window; I was glad I couldn't see. Eddie crawled on top of the car, but Zack followed– four of them to be exact. The whole car went dark as the brown ooze mixed with Eddie's blood and covered the windows. The car started bouncing up and down as they tore him apart. Elly started crying, small tears at first, and I let her. But once she started sobbing, I had to put a hand over her mouth so she would shut up. My eyes started to burn behind my eyelids and I had to cover my own mouth. We stayed down there listening to the moans and the wrecking and the screaming.

**[she closes her eyes]**

It's strange, actually. I can't remember the sounds of the people screaming right outside the car. I can't remember the moans of Zack outside the windows. But I can remember the fading sounds, always there echoing in the back of my mind.

**How long did you stay down there?**

Elly and I stayed huddled like that for hours until the dog started to squirm. I prayed to God in that moment that Zack was long gone because I didn't survive Hell to get killed because of a dog that couldn't hold its piss. I crawled over Elly who was napping, popped the lock, and opened the door. The dog bolted out. He didn't even make it to the grass.

The light outside was fading. The sky was overcast in pink and red while the long shadows of St. Louis stretched over us. The city was quiet; the highway was quiet. No more moans, no more car alarms, no more screaming.

I shut the door and crawled into the driver's seat. The keys were still in the ignition. I turned the car on and flicked the windshield wipers. They scraped over the dried blood and ooze with a strident shriek. I pulled the lever towards me as cleaning fluid sprayed the windshield and turned the dried layer back to liquid. My throat closed as it dripped down the windshield. I flicked the windshield wipers again and the windshield cleared. It looked like Hell had opened up right there under the highway. Everything was on fire; blood and that brown ooze was everywhere. But there weren't any bodies.

**What about Zack?**

None left. At least, I thought they were gone. I reached behind me to wake Elly up. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, still half-asleep. The dog started barking; I thought he wanted back in. I was in the middle of asking Elly to open the door for him when she screamed. I looked back right in time for Zack to smash his face on the windshield. He was flopped over the side of the hood and getting ready to smash his way through. I pulled the gear shift into Drive and floored it. I smashed into the car in front of me, and Zack screamed and slipped off the hood underneath my car. His skull flattened and crunched underneath my wheel, spraying that thick brown gel across my windshield and driver's side window.

I shifted into park and opened the door to check the tire. I kicked it hard to check the pressure. I kicked again, and again, and again until my foot started to hurt. Even then I kicked and heard a crack as pain shot up my foot. I howled and sat down. I started crying, sobbing right there in the middle of that Godforsaken highway.

The door opened and closed. Elly walked over and sat next to me.

"Is it dead?" she asked me. I nodded my head with my hands over my eyes. "Then what are we doing here?" She pulled at my arm. "We need to go." She pulled me up. "Let's go."

At that point, I had no more energy to fight her. She pulled me over to the car and I climbed in. She sat in the front seat, the dog rested its head on the console, and I drove us back East through the ghost city of St. Louis: no more lights, no more noise, no more people.


End file.
